Fighting a Complacent Approach

Fighting a Complacent Approach

Article excerpt

Fighting a complacent approach

How many lives does the meat industry have left? Like poor old Max the cat, who flaked out last year with Mad Cow Disease and flattened the UK's biggest food market, it can't bank on the usual quota of nine.

Having effectively expired once already, the meat trade needs a huge kick up the rear if it is not to become a case study for marketers faced with similar public image problems - a case study in how to book an early plot in the graveyard.

He has the toughest task in marketing. Uniting this enormous industry - farmers, slaughterers, retailers - behind a common goal is all but impossible. Nothing short of a revolution in product quality and presentation - providing meals, not meat - is required.

But many butchers have simply failed to use their imagination, failed to move with people's tastes - and gone bust.

While the public urgently needs to know that the industry has tightened up on its slaughterhouse practice, the MLC says its members are even now dragging their feet implementing its own "best practice" guidelines, introduced back in 1989. …